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CHARLES DICKENS - Coggle Diagram
CHARLES DICKENS
His Life
Early background: Born in Portsmouth (1812). His father was imprisoned for debt when Charles was 12.
Traumatic youth: Sent to work in a blacking factory, an experience that deeply marked him.
Early career: Worked as an office boy in a lawyer’s office, then became a successful shorthand reporter and newspaper reporter.
Literary breakthrough: Started publishing under the pen name "Boz"; gained huge success with The Pickwick Papers (1836).
Full-time novelist: Produced a constant stream of complex novels (e.g., Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations).
Social critic: Used his photographic memory of his childhood slums to write autobiographical novels criticizing factories, poverty, and social injustice.
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his novels in general
1. Setting
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Two sides of the city: He juxtaposed the misery and crime of London with amusing sketches of its life.
2. Characters
Shift to lower classes: Replaced the 18th-century upper/middle-class world with lower-order characters.
Caricatures: Created unforgettable characters by exaggerating their habits and social peculiarities.
Voice of the people: Used the real language of the London middle and lower classes (shopkeepers, tradesmen).
On the side of the poor: Always sided with the poor, the outcast, and the working class.
Children as models: Children are often the most important characters; good children serve as examples of how people should behave.
3. Didactic Stance
Awareness over rebellion: His goal was not to provoke a revolt, but to make the ruling classes aware of social problems.
Mindful of the audience: He wanted to highlight these issues without offending his middle-class readers.
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4. Style
Graphic and powerful: Used highly descriptive and impactful language to bring life and characters to the page.
Careful linguistic choices: Relied on a rich choice of adjectives, repetitions of words and structures.
Contrast and irony: Masterfully combined juxtapositions of images, hyperbolic remarks, and a strong sense of irony.
1. Oliver Twist (1838)
Plot & Key Events
Origins: Oliver is an orphan of unknown parents brought up in a workhouse, later sold to an undertaker.
London underworld: He runs away to London and gets trapped in a gang of young pickpockets led by Fagin.
Rescue and adoption: After various hardships and being shot during a forced burglary, he is permanently adopted by the kind Mr. Brownlow.
Resolution: Oliver’s noble origins are discovered, and the criminals are arrested.
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Themes
Critique of institutions: Attacks the cruelty of workhouses and the harsh treatment of poor children.
Poverty and Childhood: Focuses on the terrible effects of poverty on an individual’s life and the innocence vs. corruption of children.
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Setting & Structure
Coketown: A fictional, highly polluted industrial town in mid-19th-century Victorian England, built on "hard facts" and soot.
Three-part structure: Divided into Sowing (planting materialistic education), Reaping (harvesting the unhappy consequences), and Garnering (collecting the final details of the story).
Plot & Character Fates
The Gradgrind family: Thomas Gradgrind raises his children, Louisa and Tom, strictly on facts, banning imagination and emotion.
Louisa’s choice: She enters a loveless marriage with the older, wealthy manufacturer Mr. Bounderby to help her brother.
Tom’s downfall: Tom becomes selfish, robs his employer, frames an innocent worker, and eventually dies.
Redemption: Mr. Gradgrind realizes the damage of his materialistic philosophy; Louisa dedicates her life to charity.
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